As most of you know, a source inspection is when a customer travels to one of Trace-A-Matic’s facilities to perform quality inspections on our manufacturing process or finished goods. This procedure is often required before shipping can occur. It is prevalent in government-related manufacturing, as well as many other industries dealing with mission-critical parts.
When COVID-19 hit, it brought most things to a grinding halt, including source inspections. Travel, lodging, and restaurants were closed or highly restricted. Meaning quality inspectors weren’t visiting us anytime soon, and their machined parts and assemblies weren’t shipping either - this was unacceptable to everyone.
Trace-A-Matic had been hosting meetings across a secure communication platform between our many locations for years. We thought, why not conduct a source inspections this way, too? Our IT department went into action, equipping our engineering lab with video and audio for the task. Within days we held our first Virtual Source Inspection - It was a huge success, parts shipped, and our customer couldn’t have been more pleased.
Since then, many successful Virtual Inspections have taken place, with several remote customers realizing incredible cost and time savings to the process. Trace-A-Matic is known for innovation, not only on the machine shop floor but also throughout all business aspects, and we always put our customers’ needs first!